


the fair & the foul

by stelian



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Abuse Mentions, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Amnesia, Blood Magic, Found Family, Gen, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:57:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stelian/pseuds/stelian
Summary: Stop me if you've heard this one before. A former angel, a failed experiment, an ex-prophet, a blood magician, a magical anomaly, and one (1) Perfectly Average Human team up to rescue a human ley line and quite possibly save the world in the process.Or; Wylan, a fortune teller with absolutely no magic sensitivity, feels like he's finally starting to settle into life in Keterdam, the Magic City (so-called because it happens to sit on the hotspot of the last active ley line) until the cute boy he's been hitting on at work appears in his living room soaking wet, as cute boys tend to do. Life just gets weirder from there.
Relationships: Inej Ghafa & Nina Zenik, Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker & Inej Ghafa
Comments: 24
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> warning for emetophobia: there's a lot of mention of vomit in this chapter, but nothing graphic. also some hints at blood and violence.

It’s two in the morning, the storm of the century (or, rather, month, as it seems) is raging outside, and Wylan finds himself in the kitchen he’s never really brought himself to use, absentmindedly stirring a strange assortment of vegetables in broth and hoping that it comes together in some semblance of soup. He knows the recipe, sort of; he knew his mother used to make it for him when he was sick, and he knows that he was missing  _ something  _ in the broth, but it's late (early?) and, he supposes, good enough. 

He’d been asleep - or close enough to it, at least - as normal for a Tuesday night, the faintest hints of a headache lingering in the back of his skull, when it seemed that a large thundercloud had made itself nice and comfortable right above his apartment. And that wouldn’t have been too bad, until he started to hear his neighbor retching.

Again.

It had been a pattern for however long now. The ley line was running critically low, the smiley news anchor would say, and fluctuations were a nearly-weekly occurrence, and with all of the magic surging and vanishing there was an effect on the weather, supposedly. And so, without fail, sometime between Sunday and Wednesday of every week, the alerts went out to stay inside and take suppressants, if necessary, and the storms brewed, and Wylan’s neighbor started vomiting profusely.

So, that night, Wylan lay awake for a while, listening to the rain and the thunder and the symphony that he could hear through the goddamn-paper-thin-walls, and he lay and lay and lay until he couldn’t sit still anymore, and some weird part of his brain compelled him to make soup because, if nothing else, he could be a good neighbor. 

He realizes when a particularly bright flash of lightning strikes outside that the carrots seem to have reached an appropriate amount of mushiness, and with a yawn reaches over to turn the heat off. He knows he should locate some sort of tupperware and dish out one Perfectly Good Sick Person Serving, but it’s late and he’s tired and not in the mood, so Wylan settles for just sliding the entire pot into his (embarrassingly empty) refrigerator.

With the soup taken care of, Wylan walks into his bathroom, sits on the base of the bathtub, leans his head against the wall, and listens until the retching seems to taper off. As he grabs the pot and knocks on his neighbor’s door, he realizes he’s never actually seen his face before. Or spoken to him. Or even knew anything about him other than the fact that he always seemed to be ill.

It’s quiet for a distressingly long time after Wylan knocks, and he half has the thought that the poor guy fell asleep or died. But then he starts to hear footsteps- heavy and uneven- and the door is thrown open. 

For a moment, he wonders if he was right and the poor guy  _ did  _ die, but then somehow managed to maneuver his corpse to the door to open it. His neighbor is pale, face ashen and eyes sunken, leaning heavily against the doorframe as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. “What,” he says, and his voice almost sounds  _ painful  _ as it comes out, but at the same time Wylan has the fleeting thought that this potentially reanimated corpse could definitely kill him if he wanted to.

So Wylan thrusts out the pot he’s holding, says something dumb like “Hi, I know you’re sick and also hi, I’m your neighbor and the walls are really thin so I hope this might help you somehow feel better, goodnight-” and runs out.

He falls asleep immediately when he gets back to bed, and dreams, not for the first time, of drowning.

* * *

The city seems awfully empty as Wylan makes his way to work the next morning. It’s still storming, in a way, with rain trickling through the buildings and the occasional clap of thunder firing almost lazily. Ketterdam - the last city of magic, built right on the strongest point of the only ley line still flowing - had always been bustling, with street magic here and there and fauns and beasts and all the like wandering about. But today, the streets were empty.

It’s hard to say if it’s a surge or a crash that’s causing the deserted streets. Surges are  _ noisy _ , what with the alerts blaring and witches running about, either immediately taking their suppressants or trying to milk just a few moments of the increased magical energy. 

But the crashes…

Wylan was lucky to have never really experienced one. He’d been sleeping off a migraine for the first one when he was in town, and had been down the flu for the second one. There was magic  _ everywhere  _ in Ketterdam - cleaning the air, enhancing plant growth, supporting the buildings, supplying some of the power. And with so many magic users, or even just magic sensitive, in one place, the sudden loss of any and all magic was devastating.

And then there was Wylan. No magic ability, no sensitivity, not even an inkling of magic in his blood. Most people could, at least, walk along the ley line without directions, what with how powerful it was. But Wylan felt nothing. His closest connection to magic was his job…

… Which was a stretch to call “magic”, because So-Called Fortune Tellers were everywhere, from the legitimate prophecies to the vague but probably accurate visions, to the tourist traps that lure in people just to tell everyone the same vague three lines that seem maybe slightly comforting.

No one with any actual knowledge of magic came by  _ The Sixth Crow _ . The tellers wore ugly, archaic robes and painted their faces with “sigils” that were really just overlapping letters that looked cool, the lighting was dim, and the place smelled of must and incense. But it was cheap, and if you were looking to explore the last city of magic on a budget, it was certainly good enough.

So every morning Wylan put on his robes, drew the sigils everywhere, and spewed out vague horseshit because when you were new to a city with no job experience, this wasn’t the  _ worst  _ way to make money. 

Plus, there was  _ him _ .

_ He  _ came in weekly with a smile brighter than the one-in-a-million sunny day, making small talk and always requesting the “small cute one” and wiggling his eyebrows at Wylan. They’d play the routine, he’d talk for a bit, and then Wylan would always feel guilty about telling him about the “surprise family” or a “sudden breakthrough” that was going to come. And today is no different. 

“Good morning, sunshine,” he says, half-sitting on a floor cushion, one leg extended out to the right, the other knee pulled to his chest. He rests his elbows on his knee, hands fidgeting. “And how are you this  _ blessed  _ day?”

Wylan rolls his eyes. They do this every time. “I’m great, Jasper. What brings you in?”

Jasper laughs, shifting forwards to rest his arm on the shipping crate covered in a table cloth that’s supposed to be Wylan’s “workspace”. “Big night tonight. Big, big plans. It’ll be great, I know it, but some comfort would be nice.”

“Of course. Let’s see what the spirits say.”

Wylan closes his eyes, relaxing his posture. He reaches out for the charcoal stick always placed at his right and presses it to his palm, about to draw out the “sigil for guidance” (literally just the letters “S” “F” and “G” stacked in a circle), when he feels a hand gently squeeze his own. He opens his eyes and Jesper’s suddenly  _ very  _ close. “No, let me,” he says, and he takes the stick and starts to draw on his own hand.

He takes Wylan’s hand and cups it between his, and - 

-the water rushes up around him - 

-and Wylan dreams, not for the first time, of a voice speaking to him but not speaking - 

“Great session. Thanks! See you next week!” Jasper calls from the doorway, his back already turned and his scarf flowing behind him and into the wind outside. 

No one else comes in for the rest of the day.

  
~

It’s one in the morning, it’s not so much storming as half-heartedly raining outside, and Wylan is settled in bed and almost but not quite asleep when a resounding  _ thud  _ sounds in his living room, followed by a quick “Oh,  _ fuck _ .”

Wylan’s up before he has a moment to think about it, hand scrabbling for  _ something  _ that could maybe hypothetically be used in defense and he stumbles towards the source of the sound, lit only by the pale gleam of billboards outside. He sees a shadow move in front of him, hears something crash again, and he fumbles for a light switch and -

“Hi, yes, sorry, this is really strange and I swear to god not as bad as it looks but yes, it’s me, hello, I seem to gotten the wrong  _ fucking  _ address, so if you could just pretend this didn’t happen-”

Because it’s  _ him _ , it’s Jasper Fehay, the client he’s been flirting with for months, standing half-dressed in his living room, soaking wet. 

“How did you get in here?” Wylan asks, not thinking, because the front door sticks and he has to jiggle the knob a very certain way to get it to open and it always seems to stop and make the loudest possible creak halfway there, and he heard  _ nothing _ .

“I… broke in,” Jasper says, but he starts coughing halfway through in a way that sounds half-genuine and also half-covering for something.

“You broke in,” Wylan echoes. Jasper nods.

“Yup.”

There’s literally no evidence. His window is intact, and there’s no way to get it to it besides climbing seven stories up the side of a building, and unless Jasper is  _ really  _ good at parkour or some shit, there’s no way he’s quite that strong (because Wylan has definitely  _ not  _ looked at his shoulders and arms before when it’s been hot outside, nope, never would do that). The door is out. 

Well. That’s something.

Jasper clears his throat, and starts shuffling his feet again. “Well. I’m very sorry for this intrusion, but I was actually aiming for next door, so if you could just…” He trails off and starts coughing again, this time in earnest, and then he suddenly reaches out to anchor himself to the wall as water starts coming up. It only lasts for a few seconds and then he straightens, awfully unsteady on his feet. “I’ll pay to replace that rug. Tomorrow. Maybe in two days.”

He sways on his feet and that’s all Wylan needs to make up his mind. He crosses the space in seconds, tucking himself under Jasper’s shoulders and wrapping an arm around his neck. “Ok, buddy, we’re going to get you next door.”

“I can walk,” he mutters, but Wylan can tell that he’s shifting his weight towards him in a way that’s very much not a good sign.

And that’s how Wylan finds himself knocking at his neighbor’s door  _ again _ , mentally calculating the chances that the poor guy keeled over in his sleep, when the door is flung open. His neighbor doesn’t even glance at him, just looks at Jasper and then rolls his eyes.

Wylan doesn’t move, but then Jasper mumbles something and his neighbor rolls his eyes again and says, “Well, are you going to bring him in?”

He doesn’t offer to help as Wylan maneuvers Jasper to a ridiculously uncomfortable looking couch. Wylan almost finds himself getting angry at him until he takes in just how heavily Neighbor leans, his weight shifted completely onto his left foot, white-faced in a way that definitely isn’t healthy. He doesn’t move until Wylan gets Jasper to lay down, curling on his side and tugging a blanket tossed over the back over himself, perching himself on the edge of what looks to be a shipping crate of questionable integrity.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Neighbor asks but doesn’t  _ really  _ ask. Even though he looks like he’s two steps away from death’s door, Wylan sees the way his fingers are digging into the crate, jaw clenched, and suddenly he’s very vividly imagining a murder that could play out any moment now.

“It didn’t go so well. They were ready for us, and the line shorted, and suddenly they had Nina and were trying to get to Inej. Something happened, I don’t know, and then I was in the harbor and they were gone, and I-” Jasper’s eyes dart towards Wylan - “y’know, tried to come back. I miscalculated.”

Neighbor leans forward, about to say something, and then Jasper sits straight up.

“Fuck. They got Nina. Fuck fuck fuck fuck-”

“Jes. Shut  _ up _ .” Neighbor reaches for Jasper-Jes?- and Wylan thinks _ this is it, this is the moment, rest in peace _ , but his hands stop short of his throat and instead of choking him he just pushes him back down. “It’ll be fine. We’ll get her. Go to sleep.”

Neighbor looks to Wylan then, finally.

“Do you know how to drive?”

“What?”

Neighbor’s giving him that look again, the same intense face of vague murderous thoughts. “I asked if you know how to drive.” 

“Yes?”

“Do you have a car?”

“No?” Paying rent isn’t too bad, but after that there usually isn’t enough-

“Okay, not a problem. Get dressed, meet me back here in ten minutes.”

* * *

When Wylan was younger, he used to lucid dream. He’d thought it was normal that his dreams were a bizarre choose-your-own-adventure instead of a motion picture playing out in his subconscious. However, his autonomy made the vivid dreams all the more lifelike - the nightmares more nightmarish, the pleasant dreams softer around the edges. There’d been a period of time where he wasn’t always sure what was real and what he’d dreamed; sometimes, even when awake, he’d feel light and detached from his body, almost as if he were simply dreaming of a realistic life.

Standing outside, all sounds drowned out by the roar of rain on his umbrella, water seeping through the cracks in rainboots that had seen better days, and watching Neighbor - whose name he still doesn’t know, fuck - elegantly hotwire a fancy car that was parked outside the apartment building, Wylan’s definitely not sure he isn’t dreaming. 

“Are you kidnapping me?” he asks while Neighbor wrenches the wheel several times. He doesn’t respond. Wylan starts to repeat himself, but is interrupted by a loud crack as the steering lock breaks.

“I heard you the first time,” Neighbor says, sliding out of the car and tucking a screwdriver back into his coat. “Does it look like I’m forcing you to come along? Do you feel threatened? Is there a gun to your head that I’m not seeing?”

“No, but -”

“Then stop complaining and drive. I’ll tell you where we’re going.”

The radio is still playing smooth jazz from whatever arrogant rich snob parked their car outside, unguarded. It had been locked, but there must’ve been some sort of defect in the locking mechanism considering how easily Neighbor had broken in (or he was just that good, but no one can pick a lock that easily, right?) He has half a mind to turn off the radio but that would mean sitting in silence with someone he barely knows who could probably definitely kill him and is leading him to god-knows-where.

“So… you’re a friend of Jasper?” Wylan asks, because  _ anything  _ to break the tense silence is appreciated and on the list of Questions that one’s pretty high but probably (hopefully?) harmless.

Except Neighbor  _ laughs,  _ a sound that’s almost painful and more than a little terrifying. “I guess you could say that,” he says, “Except he’s shit at giving fake names and it’s actually  _ Jesper _ . What’d he say his last name was? Fohey?”

“Fehay, but -”

“Oh, that’s  _ good _ .” Neighbor makes a sound like he’s going to say something else, but instead shifts again, slumping in the seat with one leg stretched out. Despite the position, he doesn’t look overly comfortable.

Wylan starts, “Okay, so, would you care to explain why your friend has been using a fake name to see me this whole time, and also he just sort of appeared in my apartment tonight can you explain-” except of  _ course  _ he gets cut off because of  _ course  _ they conveniently arrive at a sketchy dock.

“ _ This  _ is where we were going?”

It’s barely visible in the dim light, but Wylan’s pretty sure Neighbor rolls his eyes at him. “Look, a… colleague of mine was taken here. I’m getting her back. If you don’t think you can handle what’ll happen here, stay here, get down, and don’t make a sound.” He’s halfway out of the car before he finishes, as if he already knew the answer.

Well.

“I’m not staying here. I drove you here, I’m coming with you,” Wylan says.

Again, it’s barely visible, but he thinks Neighbor might actually grin at him. 

“Stay behind me,” he says. 

The docks are empty at this time of night. When the ley lines were active everywhere, Ketterdam’s harbor had been bustling with shipments of all sorts of magical items. Wylan’s only heard stories of it at its peak; since the ley lines collapsed, so did the magic industry. As the only remaining city of magic exports were still common, but the price had skyrocketed to the point where shipments were rare.

Neighbor leads him snaking around the ghosts of boats and huts, gait lurching as he leans heavily on a cane. It’s still raining lazily, and the occasional bolt of lightning fires in the distance. But despite the weather, the air is still and heavy. The only sign of movement is a small, scraggly cat that sits on a barrel and bolts at the site of two humans coming near.

_ Drip _ .

Neighbor stops abruptly, Wylan almost crashing into him. He swipes the flashlight towards the sound, and -

Blood. It’s blood.

Except it’s actually a body that’s illuminated, but that definitely explains the source of the drip, because a man sits propped against a wall, bleeding steadily from a deep gash in his neck and at least one other spot on his torso, and bits are dripping down into an already sizeable pool of blood -

As quietly as he can, Wylan turns around and vomits into the harbor. 

When he turns back, Neighbor is gone and the door next to the man/body/corpse is open.

He doesn’t want to follow him in, he wants to run back to the car and maybe cry a bit and then go to sleep and forget about the body and the boy who appeared in his living room and the docks, but instead he steps inside.

Neighbor is standing in the center of the room, very still, the flashlight focused on the corner. Or, rather, the girl who is curled up there. Wylan has half a thought that she’s dead as well, given how still she is, but then he sees her breathing - maybe a bit too fast, maybe a bit erratic, but breathing. Neighbor is muttering something that might be a name, but it’s too quiet for him to hear.

Wylan’s moving before he can think. He sees a girl - she can’t be that much older than him - chained against a wall, blindfolded, her hands wrapped in what look almost like oven mitts. He doesn’t know where to start, but reaches for the cuffs on her hands despite not knowing how to unlock them. 

It’s at that moment that she springs into action.

The girl  _ lurches  _ forward, and the force and surprise of it knocks Wylan backwards. The chains are longer than Wylan thought and she leans forward, as far as she can, teeth bared, and he can just barely roll out of the way when she snaps on the exposed skin at the end of his sleeve.

Neighbor yells something.

There’s a sickeningly loud sound, almost like a gunshot except maybe it was a gunshot because he’s not actually sure what one sounds like, and the girl slumps backwards.

Wylan is scrambling away from her at the same time as Neighbor scrambles towards her. In seconds he’s ripping off the blindfold, unlocking the cuffs at her wrists, and tearing the mitts off of her hands. 

“Did she break the skin?” Neighbor yells as he untangles her from what seems like a web of chains.

Wylan hums. The world seems fuzzy at the edges. He feels for his arm, at his neck, the places where she was trying to bite, but he finds nothing. He’s not hurt. “I’m fine,” he says. He’s fine. What’s wrong?

Oh. That.

“You  _ shot  _ her,” Wylan says, his voice choked, because even though she was attacking him there was a sort of desperation to it moreso than actual malice, and he just  _ shot  _ her. 

“She’ll be fine,” Neighbor says. “Look at her arm.”

Wylan doesn’t want to look but he edges forward anyway. When she’d fallen, he’d gotten a glimpse at the gaping wound on her arm. Maybe it was the shock, but it seemed bigger then. But as he’s pondering, he sees the tissue knit together, blood flowing  _ backwards  _ into the wound instead of out, skin pulling closer at the edges. 

The girl’s eyes flutter open. She sits up, craning her head to look at her rapidly-sealing wound. “Huh. That’s pretty nifty,” she says, head turning up to look at Neighbor. “Good one, Kaz. Can we get out of here? I’m starving. And tired.” 

“Please don’t pass out,” Neighbor - Kaz? - says, and there’s a hint of what may be, just a hint of, a bastardization of a smile in his voice. The girl flicks her hands out, scratches her hairline, and starts to shift her legs around. “You better be able to walk.”

She purses her lips. “No. Yes. Maybe? I think? Help me up and I should be fine.” She stretches an arm out, but Kaz doesn’t move.

Wylan’s lost in the sound of the gentle lapping of the harbor against the dock before he realizes that, yes, he is in the room, and Kaz is looking at him expectantly, and he takes a moment to pull himself back into his body. He raises himself up on shaky legs and levers the girl up.

“Hey cutie, the name’s Nina,” she says, wrapping an arm around his. “Let’s leave this place, shall we?” 

It’s slow going - Wylan’s unsteady and mute and his legs feel like lead, and Nina seems to be gelatinous and alternates between leaning most of her weight onto him and being almost independent. Meanwhile, Kaz follows them and offers no assistance, as seems to be normal for him.

And then Nina stumbles.

Her knee gives way and she falls, but her limbs don’t seem connected and the arm that was looped in Wylan’s is pushing him and pulling him, and meanwhile he drifts away from his body again, just briefly - 

\- and then the splash of cold water brings him back, just long enough for the harbor to close over him - 

  
  
  
  


~

The spider-girl sits in front of him again.

“We really shouldn’t keep meeting like this,” she says, sipping from the teacup that always seems to be in her hand. “Has no one told you yet why you’re here?”

The world is muffled. Colors swirl by, reds and blues and purples, all blurring together in a dizzying spiral. Wylan tries to look behind him to escape the motion but he can’t  _ move _ . 

“Don’t panic,” she says. “This happens every time. You don’t have a body. No one does, not down here.”

It’s then that he remembers what’s wrong about her - she doesn’t speak, not in the right way. Because her mouth moves, and he hears her voice, but they’re delayed, like a TV program that’s out of sync. And she’s blurred around the edges, and the colors swirl past her, because she’s  _ not here _ . 

“No, that’s not right; I’m here.  _ You’re  _ not here. You’re just visiting.” The spider-girl smiles, then, and it’s tinged with a strange sort of sadness. “When you get back, tell him not to worry about me. I’m safe. I’m okay. And take care of her for me, will you?”

~


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the one in which waffles are shared, conversations are had, and a girl is almost (but not quite) killed. [warnings for emetophobia and blood]

Wylan wakes up half-frozen with a godawful ache in his back, and the blanket draped over his lap does nothing to drown out the chill that seems settled in his bones. It’s bright, and he finds himself blinking to adjust when he notices a strange warm, sweet smell in the air.

“Waffles are up!” a familiar voice calls, annoyingly perky against the dull throbbing in Wylan’s head. “Come on, they’re warm and fresh and tasty, you know you want some.”

“Not hungry.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Not relevant.”

He’s not in his own apartment; the horribly overstuffed couch and scratchy blanket are evidence enough. The identity of the voices are just out of his grasp, but he doesn’t feel  _ unsafe _ , necessarily, despite the grogginess. He takes in the room he’s in, though, the crates stacked high and overflowing with strange books and the walls henpecked with post-it notes and various photographs and symbols attached by thumbtacks, and all of it - the docks, Nina, falling - rushes back. 

Despite the protest from his entire body, Wylan is upright and standing faster than he thought possible. He stumbles away from the couch, suddenly aware that he’s not dressed in his own clothes, and everything feels  _ wrong _ .

He isn’t aware that his legs gave out until he’s on his knees and someone is holding his arms, gentle but firm enough to keep him upright. “Hey, breathe. You’re okay. I know a lot happened, but take it easy. Look at me.” Wylan forces air into his lungs and, with tremendous effort, manages to raise his head.

And drop it back down immediately, because it’s  _ Jasper  _ Jesper staring at him and holding his arms.

Fuck.

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out, because this shouldn’t be  _ happening _ . He should be going to work and donning his stupid robe and making small talk with the cheap tourists who are taken in by the spectacle, and then going home and going to bed and using the rain as white noise to fall asleep. Not  _ here _ , amongst - What even  _ are  _ these people?

“For what?” Jesper says, and then adds, with a wink, “Don’t be. You look great in my clothes.”

Wylan is acutely aware of the blood rushing to his face. “ _ Jesper _ ,” someone calls from across the room. Ah, right. Kaz. He’s there too.

“Sorry, sorry, bad joke. But Wylan, do you think you can stand?”

He hums and assesses. He’s cold and tired and his head hurts, but his body is in one piece and he’s - at least physically - unharmed. His tongue still feels awfully heavy so he nods, but that seems to be enough of an answer for Jesper, who effortlessly eases him back to standing.

Jesper guides him to what seems to be the makeshift “kitchen”, where paperwork dusts the counters and table that has seen at least three lifetimes. Kaz sits there, hands wrapped around a gigantic mug of coffee matched in size only by the stack of waffles that sit untouched in front of him. 

“Since  _ someone  _ is ungrateful, how do you feel about waffles? I wish I could say something about an ancient family recipe, but they’re really just frozen and probably too old to eat but probably can’t kill you,” Jesper says while already pushing the plate towards Wylan. 

He takes a bite and he’s greeted by a disgustingly, over-sweet and slightly spongy piece of dough with maybe the slighest resemblance to a maple syrup flavor. “These are disgusting,” he says once he’s choked down the wad of dough, earning a grin from Kaz and a noise of disgust from Jesper.

“Leggo my eggo,” he says, yanking the plate towards himself. “I guess you two are  _ both  _ ungrateful. What do you have against the joys of a frozen, stuffed with preservatives waffe?” Wylan thinks for a moment. When  _ was  _ the last time -

His head starts to throb.

“I guess I’ve never really had one.”

There’s a weird exchange of glances between Jesper and Kaz that lasts a brief second before Kaz takes a long sip of his coffee. “Let me see. What else can I offer you?” Jesper turns back to the cabinetry and opens the fridge, which from over his shoulder Wylan can tell is almost completely empty. “Kaz, do you have cereal?”

“It’s stale.”

“Good enough.”

Jesper digs out a box of Lucky Charms that, true to his warning, tastes extremely stale as Wylan scoops up a spoonful with lukewarm tap water (because he isn’t  _ that  _ uncivilized that he eats dry cereal). Even then, the marshmallows taste painfully sweet. 

It’s after three spoonfuls that, again, the situation dawns on Wylan and weirdly domestic this is.

He sets his bowl down with a satisfying  _ thump  _ and looks straight at Kaz, who lowers his head for another huge sip of coffee. “So are you going to tell me what happened last night and why you shot Nina but she was fine? And why this one -” he jerks his head towards Jesper- “turned up in the middle of my apartment?

It’s that moment that Nina waltzes in the room, dressed in a long red bathrobe with her arm in a sling. “Morning boys,” she says, grabbing the plate of waffles from Jesper and shoving one into her mouth. “Good news, the ley line’s alive.” Neither Jesper nor Kaz say anything. She holds up a finger, swallows, and then says, “What? There’s no reason to keep anything from Wylan.”

“Uh,” Jesper says, at the same time that Wylan asks, “You’re fine?”

Nina chokes down another chunk of waffle. “I’m peachy. Little achy, but I was pretty high when I was shot.”

Kaz rolls his eyes. “I told you she was fine.”

“That didn’t answer any of my questions,” he says. “Can you tell me what happened last night?”

Jesper sighs, crosses his arms, and leans back in his chair. “I’ll do it.”

Except a long moment passes in which he doesn’t say anything, so Kaz downs the last of his coffee, slams it on the table, and says, “Nina’s a blood magician, Jesper’s a Diffuser, and we’re trying to locate a human ley line for the profit.”

Nina reaches over and punches Jesper on the shoulder. “We’re not looking for him for profit.”

_ Blood magic _ . That makes sense, at least; he knows that blood magic is rare and tightly regulated. When Nina’s uninjured arm shifts just right, he can see a pale silver bracelet peeking out from under her sleeve, most likely a suppressant bracelet of some sort. He’s heard in passing all of the controversy over the tight regulations imposed on them, the regimented training and how difficult it was to get a license to be able to do  _ anything  _ without immediate arrest.

Everything else though?

He stares at them blankly with the hope of some sort of explanation.

“ _ Kaz _ here is only interested in the reward offered for turning the ley line in to IMP for them to do god-knows-what, but the rest of us just want to help the poor kid. We have a friend, Matthias, he’s an angel-of-sorts and he’s been helping us, which - Aha! Right on time!” Jesper leaps up as a faint beeping sound comes out of what looks like an ancient pager some sixty-something businessman would wear. “Be right back!” He disappears.

Literally.

Poof.

“You two are shit at explaining things,” Nina says, taking Jesper’s seat. “So. Where are you lost?” She reaches out to take Wylan’s hand, tracing long, red fingernails over the lines of his palm.

All that Wylan can say is, “Uh.” 

Nina grins, patting his hand. “I know. It’s a lot. You know how the ley line is collapsing, right?” Wylan nods - he can’t  _ not  _ know, not living in the middle of it. “So there’s a lot of fears about, you know, losing it completely, and then magic’s out for everyone. Which would suck. And that’s where IMP comes in - Institute for Magical Purity. You know, government-associated but not necessarily governmental. They do all of the magic licensing and hand out suppressants for when the spikes happen. With me?” She obviously isn’t expecting a response, because she keeps going before Wylan can say anything. “Anyway, there’s been this drug sort of making its way around internationally before it came here. They call it  _ parem _ , and apparently being on it is just like doing magic at the epicenter of a ley line. But it’s - “

“Blood,” Wylan says, the words leaving his mouth before he even has the chance to think about them. “ _ Parem.  _ Holy blood of a....”

Nina jumps back in her seat like she’s been shot.

How did he -?

Wylan is suddenly acutely aware of the way his head is pounding.

“Blood of a ley line,” Kaz says, his voice barely any louder than the ringing in Wylan’s ears. “How did you know that?”

“I-” Wylan starts, but Kaz suddenly straightens in his chair before rising to his feet with great effort. Without the cane he’d carried the previous night, Wylan is suddenly aware of just how uneven his stride is and the way his right leg seems almost locked in place. He’s so surprised by the sudden departure that he almost forgets the pain in his head.

He hears the retching start up.

Ah. At least that’s familiar.

Nina just rolls her eyes and keeps plowing through the waffles in front of her. “Don’t worry too much about him,” she says as Wylan stares at Kaz’s empty seat. “He’s fine. Just a dramatic shit who’s sensitive to fluctuations in the line.”

“Is he also a blood magician?”

She laughs, throwing her head back. Despite the way her skin is slightly gray and how exhausted she looks, Wylan realizes that Nina really is quite beautiful in the not-quite-sunlight that was about as bright as Ketterdan gets. “Kaz? God, no. I don’t know what he is, to be honest. But that boy has about as much affinity for magic as this table.”

It’s at that moment that Jesper reappears with a yell of  _ “KNOCK KNOCK” _ . Or, rather, he crashes into the room, since he appears somehow on top of Nina but unbalanced and ends up tumbling gracelessly to the floor. “ _ Thief,”  _ he spits as he drags himself back upright. Nina’s self-satisfied grin makes Wylan laugh, for the first time in what seems like days.

Jesper doesn’t question Kaz’s absence, instead sliding into the seat that had been his. “Saw Matthias. He’s fine and the line are fine, they’re just in hiding right now. They’re in pretty bad trouble right now, but he’s pretty sure he found a good place to hide out until we can meet up.”

At the mention of Matthias, Nina shoves half of a waffle into her mouth, ducking her head. She chews for a moment. “And Inej?”

Jesper shakes his head. Wylan remembers Inej being mentioned the previous night, but that’s about it. “No one’s found her yet.”

“We have to find her,” Nina says, and there’s a fire in her eyes that’s been hidden in all of the past banter. “ _ I  _ need to find her. It’s been too long.”

Wylan is aware, not for the first time, that he’s an outsider in this little group. Truth be told, he’s not even sure why he’s still there. Everything they talk about is way over his head. He did his part, he’s not cut out for this weird shit.

“I forgot to ask. How are you feeling?” When Wylan looks up because the silence starts to drag on, he realizes that Jesper’s eyes are focused on him. 

“Me?” he says, and  _ god  _ there’s no reason his voice should squeak like that - 

“You fell in the harbor last night. Honestly, I’m shocked that Kaz pulled you out. That’s a rare selfless move, coming from him.”

Kaz reappears in the doorway, unphased by Jesper’s reappearance. “Think of it as repaying an investment.”

Something in Wylan snaps at that moment, and he stands up. “Okay, listen, I’m done with being called weird things and being half left-out of every conversation, so I’m just going to go home and get back to my life, thank you very much -” He turns to leave, but someone grabs his hand.

“I can show you something,” Jesper says, his fingers wrapped tightly around Wylan’s wrist. It isn’t tight; he could easily pull himself away if he so desired. “If you’ll let me?”

He hesitates, his eyes flick towards Kaz, but he otherwise doesn’t wait for a response.

.

It’s like falling, but also flying. No, not flying, because he’s still heavy and even though he’s ascending, it’s not himself moving. Floating, perhaps. The world seems to compress, zipping past him in a blur of colors. It’s dizzying, and Wylan can’t tell if the ringing in his ears is real or not.

And then everything stops. Well, not really, because the world is still swirling and the colors run together, but he himself is no longer in motion.

“Sorry, I should have warned you better,” a voice beside him says. “But welcome to Nowhere.”

Jesper stands beside him, but it’s not really him. Half of his face is obscured by what looks like a gray cloud, and the rest of his body just looks Wrong as if his mind is trying to reconstruct human proportions after years of isolation.

“Nowhere?” Wylan stares at the twisting colors surround him and Jesper. They’re familiar in the way that dreams are when you can’t quite recall - 

“Yeah, that’s what Kaz calls it. Nowhere, or Everywhere. Either way, we’re in the mush that’s between worlds. If we went far enough, we’d crash into another world, depending on our direction, but for now we’re just here.”

Besides Jesper’s voice, it’s silent. The ringing stopped the moment the world stabilized. Perhaps  _ world  _ isn’t the correct term. Jesper stands next to him, but it’s almost like they’re suspended in a thick gelatin because there’s no sense of direction. They’re just  _ there _ . “How did we get here?” Wylan asks.

Jesper hums. “It’s like… you know how when you mix water and oil, they separate? All the worlds are water and this is the oily layer in between. And the interface is usually too tight for anyone to pass through, but sometimes channels open up and people go straight through. Or, sometimes, some people can pass through one interface but not the other just because they’re a little closer to it than others.”

“That’s you?”

“That’s me!” The visible portion of Jesper’s face beams, colors becoming just a little bit more vibrant around him. Wylan watches them slowly drift by, ribbons of blue and orange, as Jesper looks at him. “I wish we could tell you what’s been happening to you. You’ve felt it, right? Headaches, weird dreams, forgetting things?”

Wylan looks over to him and realizes, with a flutter in his chest, that Jesper is still grasping his wrist. “I’m fine,” he says, but Jesper just grabs his other hand. Despite how Not Right he looks, the contact is grounding. 

“Can I ask you a question?” - Wylan nods, because he knows he doesn’t really have a choice - “Do you remember anything from before you moved into your apartment?”

Everything starts moving faster. The colors whirl past, blues and yellows melting into greens that run across the spaces between Wylan and Jesper, and suddenly Nowhere feels heavier - but Jesper  _ squeezes _ his hands, pulls him down so they’re both squatting on the not-ground, and he lightly pushes his head down so he’s staring at what isn’t ground.

Because it’s a mirror.

At first Wylan can’t see himself, because most of his body is hidden. The first thing he sees is the chains, heavy and steel, that encircle his torso and dig into his neck. His head is bound, his eyes are covered with heavy cloth and his mouth is fashioned shut, and he’s uncomfortably reminded of the way Nina was restrained and cut off from the world when he’d found her. 

But there’s something else, too, that he doesn’t notice until he feels its weight. A blanket, heavy and soft, wrapped around his shoulders. A scarf that slips beneath the chains around his neck, preventing them from touching his skin.  _ Comfort.  _

“It’s not much,” Jesper says. “I’ve been weaving that blanket every time I’ve come to see you at work. Kaz and I made the scarf. They’re protection from harm.”

Wylan wants to be sick.

“And everything else?”

“When I met you, you were  _ smothered  _ in it. We’ve reversed what we can, but everything else is too deep. It’s old magic. Keeps you from remembering.”

“Remembering  _ what _ ?”

Jesper’s eyes seem to sparkle. He knows; it’s obvious in the way that his shoulders droop and his thumbs absently rub over Wylan’s palms. “I can’t tell you.”

“Of course you can’t.” Wylan’s standing again. He wasn’t aware how heavy he felt until he saw how much extra he was carrying. He’s not sure if there’s gravity here, but regardless it’s pushing on him harder.

Jesper is, suddenly, in front of him. “Listen, I want to. But did you see how many curses are on you? We don’t know how many are failsafes.”

Wylan opens his mouth to protest, but something at the very top of his vision catches his attention. Amongst the colors and the viscous surroundings, there snakes a line that’s just clear. 

“That’s the ley line,” Jesper says. “It’s supposed to be brighter than Nowhere, but everything’s leaked out. Doesn’t it feel sick?”

Something pulls him closer.

It’s familiar.

Like a ….

A dream.

He isn’t aware of moving, but suddenly the barrier is right in front of him. It’s like the side of a bubble, translucent and barely solid but still there. It looks so fragile that he hesitates, but he puts his palm against it anyway.

For a moment, he feels her.

A girl - not any older than he is - but wisened, she sits with a mug of tea every time, and even though her eyes are sad she’s fierce.

_ Are you dead?  _ he’d asked her one time, and she’d just smiled,  _ In a way, yes, but right now I’m just trapped.  _

He pushes through the barrier; his hand slides through easily and so does most of his arm. He reaches for her, both with his arm and with his mind, and it’s empty for a while but then something roars and she’s there. 

In the back of his mind he hears Jesper yelling, and suddenly he’s pulling on her and someone’s pulling him, and the silence turns over to what sounds like an engine roaring, but he pushes through.

On the other side of the barrier, everything rushes. He’s struck with vertigo and as everything turns, he looks for her because she was there, just now, but there’s bodies all around him. He’s being pulled in every direction, it’s impossible to move in any one direction -

_ There _ .

Like all of the others, she floats; limp, like a corpse. He wraps his arms around her and  _ pulls  _ his way back through the barrier, but he can’t quite - 

Something grabs his ankle, and he feels its claws shred  _ through  _ his foot. He pushes on the barrier harder, but it doesn’t part the way that it had. He feels something ribbon-like wrap around his legs and it  _ burns,  _ even more than the deep lacerations in his foot, and he screams and pries at the barrier but instead of being a bubble it’s a heavy glass enclosure, like he’s some sort of zoo animal. 

The tendrils around his leg squeeze tighter, and they grab the girl in his arms and heave, nearly ripping her away, except something slices through them and they retreat like ivy creeping up trees. Someone -  _ Jesper _ ,  _ his mind says, it’s Jesper _ \- grasps his arm and, in one dizzying moment, he’s  flying floating drowning again - 

And then he’s facedown on a tile floor with a heavy weight on his back. For a moment the sickening vertigo keeps its hold and he’s not sure if it’s the exhaustion weighing him down, but there’s a shift in the weight above him and suddenly he’s free.

He pulls himself into a sitting position as the hum around him fades and he becomes acutely aware of a sharp, piercing sound-

“Why the  _ fuck  _ did you let him do that?” Nina’s not looking at him; she’s kneeling over a body on the the floor that wasn’t there a few minutes ago, but her voice is targeted all the same. Jesper’s form blocks his view, but he catches a flash of red and then something shines before a soft groan escapes the girl who’s limp on the floor.

Wylan inches closer. She’s strong but thin, her dark hair pulled into a loose braid that hangs over her shoulder. Her skin is dark but dulled; toned a sickly green that matches the sound of her wheezing breaths, the coughs that wrack her body. Nina kneels behind her head, clutching a knife in her hand, and Wylan sees her hand linger on the girl’s face, tender, before she draws a lighter from her pocket, passes the blade through it, and draws a sharp line across the girl’s neck.

She struggles but doesn’t awaken as Nina presses harder, blood starting to run out. Jesper grasps the girl’s shoulders, keeping her down, as Nina shifts to open up both forearms before slicing her own palm. When the blood starts to pool beneath the girl, Nina presses a single drop of her blood into the now-gaping wound in her neck.

Kaz, his hands gloved, reaches out and squeezes Nina’s right hand as she lays her left across the girl’s forehead.

It’s at that moment that Wylan finally rediscovers his voice, and it squeaks out as he asks, “What are you doing to her?”

Nina doesn’t move, but Jesper and Kaz’s heads whip up. There’s a coldness to Jesper that almost matches Kaz’s resting expression, and the way he clenches his jaw has Wylan recoiling out of an instinct he doesn’t quite realize. “You ripped her straight through the ley line. It’s… everything’s different, down there, and she’s poisoned because  _ you  _ charged ahead without me.” 

Wylan stares at the girl on the floor. It’s her, alright, the girl in his dreams with her tea and her sad eyes. “I didn’t know,” he says, his voice small, and something weird flashes in Kaz’s eyes as he turns his attention back to Nina, who sits, unmoving, eyes shut tightly. “I’m sorry. I recognized her, and I felt like I had to pull her out.”

Jesper shifts on his knees, loosening his grip on the girl’s shoulders. She stopped struggling long ago, and Wylan tries not to account it to the pool of blood that’s forming beneath her. “I know. I know you didn’t know what you were doing, but it was stupid.” 

The air is heavy and coppery as Wylan leans forward for another glance. She’s still breathing but blood is still creeping out, but if he looks closely the tint to her skin is fading and the sickly pallor is receding. Jesper’s eyes flick towards him. “Nina has to bloodlet her. She’ll be okay, I promise. Nina’s good, and Inej is strong.”

Wylan frowns. “I thought that was a medieval medicine-quackery.”

That does earn him a smirk, at least, from Jesper. “Not if a blood magician does it.”

After what feels like an eternity of heavy silence, Nina slumps forward, her hand dropping from Inej’s forehead. “Bandages.”

For a second Jesper disappears, and then reappears holding a roll of bandages and various disinfectants. Nina rolls her eyes, murmurs, “Showoff,” and then starts methodically wrapping the wounds that definitely look much smaller than they did seconds ago.

_ She’ll be fine, _ Wylan thinks.  _ I didn’t kill her _ .

_ Not this time,  _ a voice in his head says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, taking biochemistry this semester and realizing exactly what the world structure i've been imagining for years resembles: fuck
> 
> thanks for the amazing response friends!! this plotline/characterization is very near and dear to my heart so i'm glad you guys like it so far! please DO NOT HESITATE to shoot me a comment/message if anything needs to be explained better; i've got a looooot going on here and i've been playing with these ideas for years now. 
> 
> all of the crows are accounted for! we will be seeing matthias and kuwei very shortly, as well as some friends from the grisha trilogy! stay tuned!


	3. interlude, i: kaz

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief moment between Wylan falling into the harbor and waking up.

“What were you dosed with?” Kaz asks, voice terse as he keeps his eyes fixated on the road. Just because he  _ can  _ drive, theoretically, doesn’t mean it’s always a good idea; pushing the pedal sends sparks of pain up and down his bad leg, the motions are unnatural, and truthfully, his vision isn’t really what it should be, especially at night. 

From the backseat, Nina hums. Wylan is draped across her lap, shivering. “Parem, I think, but not the good stuff. Must’ve been stale.”

_ She was a trap _ , Kaz thinks. Nina’s powerful, but she’s nothing special. But tying her up like that, isolating her so all she could feel was the blood running through her veins but she couldn’t do anything about it?  _ That  _ was an excellent distress signal. Lure in Inej, or Wylan, or even Matthias, and then set loose the starving animal to take out the threat for you.

But Matthias was too slow, and Wylan was too handicapped, and Inej…

_ Say you’re sorry, _ she’d said, when she was bleeding half-gone, and Wylan lay on the docks, seizing, and  the bodies in the water the tide reached out and swallowed her. 

He felt her, sometimes, and not in the way that people wrote on greeting cards when they said they felt their dead loved ones. She was alive, she was just buried somewhere that was also Nowhere, and Jesper said he sometimes heard her voice when he was Nowhere.

There’s a choked sound from the backseat, and it isn’t Nina. For a second Kaz thinks Wylan is waking up from the trance he’d been in since he fell into the harbor, but then he feels the stab of pain in his temple and the nausea rise in his gut, and he pulls the car just in time to vomit seawater on the side of the road.

He’ll never get used to the brininess, the taste of rot that fills his mouth even though it’s just water. It’s fresher, tonight; he’d seen the bodies in the harbor, felt them drifting and crowding his legs as he’d pulled Wylan out, untangled their swollen, crooked fingers from his throat. 

Sirens blare, warning of an unprecedented surge and all magicians above Class II are encouraged to take their suppressants. In minutes, all of the suppressant bracelets will discharge a shock that will render their wearer powerless.

Nina.

Kaz wipes his mouth and throws the rear doors open. Wylan’s seizing again, limbs jerking while he babbles ancient words, strewn on the floor because Nina is limp and unresponsive, her pupils blown. Blood streams from the corners of her mouth where she’s bitten through her cheek, rivulets creeping out and then reversing direction in a strange sort of dance. 

“Kaz,” she chokes out. “I need you to -” 

“I know,” he says. Her bracelet is faulty; it has been ever since they met. They were surprisingly easy to disable in a way that went unnoticed. However, like any good trick, he knows how to reverse it. The chip is always in his pocket, just in case. He slides it into the slot, fingers wrapped carefully around just the bracelet on her shaking wrist. All it takes is two presses to the little remote that he keeps with it, and the shock courses through her instantly. 

The blood pools from her mouth and her arm. He can tell that she’d reopened the wound during the surge, but it’s only bleeding lazily. 

With a heave, Kaz rolls Wylan back onto Nina’s lap, keeping him on his side. The seizure seems to have subsided, and Wylan takes in little, shallow breaths that rasp in his chest. At least he won’t have to worry about him waking up.

The radio slowly shifts back to playing music instead of sirens. A short surge, but an unexpected one, which has serious implications for the stability of the ley line.

Streetlights blur past as he drives. He reaches for the radio, switching stations from the smooth jazz until something comes on that can take his mind off of the lingering nausea.

At least the music there was good. 

_ The highways jammed with broken heroes _

_ On a last chance power drive _

_ Everybody's out on the run tonight _

_ But there's no place left to hide… _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for someone with emetophobia i sure do write a lot about vomit  
> song from the end is born to run by bruce springsteen.


	4. Chapter 4

Wylan is startled out of his daydreaming by the sound of pills clattering in the shopping basket perched on his elbow. He jumps, vision focusing back on Kaz, who holds a large bottle of painkillers identical to the one in the basket. After a moment’s consideration, he throws that one in too.

He’d only spent a day in Kaz’s dingy apartment, but the brightness of the drugstore still shocked him as they’d entered. Even though he’d gone back to his own bed to sleep, Wylan had woken up to the sound of Kaz rapping his cane against the floor.

“What the fuck, I  _ locked  _ that!” he’d yelled once he’d recovered enough to find his voice. Kaz had just laughed.

“You’ll learn soon enough. Locks are meaningless.” With a bit of flair he’d turned, making to leave. “Come next door in ten minutes. We’re going shopping.”

Lo and behold fifteen minutes later, there they are, piling a suspicious amount of first-aid supplies in a shopping basket. Or, rather, Kaz throws items in the basket perched on Wylan’s elbow that’s starting to get far too heavy. 

__ “Why did you need me again?” Wylan asks, while Kaz ponders two different boxes of oversized band-aids. “You won’t even tell me why we need all of this.” There’s no response at first. In the two days that Wylan’s really known Kaz, he’s started to catch onto the fact that the lack of response has no bearing on whether or not he was actually heard. It’s long enough that Wylan almost starts to think that he actually went unheard, until he gets a very deliberate whack on the side of the knee. 

When he looks up, Kaz’s posture is easy but there’s an edge in his eyes that Wylan definitely doesn’t want to push. He hadn’t been hit hard enough to hurt, just sting, but with more weight than expected from a cane. Kaz, however, decides not to answer further, and continues his winding trek.

They’re in line to check out, Wylan’s elbow aching from the weight dangling from it, when something comes over him and he says, “I saw the scarf you and Jesper made.”

Kaz sighs, rolls his eyes. “I don’t know why Jesper gave me any credit for that. All I did was stop him falling in.” 

As usual for any time Wylan happened to open his fucking mouth lately, that just raised more questions than it answered.

“I suppose you won’t tell me what it was for.”

“Indeed not.” Kaz pauses, shifts, and then adds half-under-his-breath, “Maybe someday you’ll earn your truth privileges, but today isn’t your lucky day.”

* * *

They stumble back to Kaz’s apartment in silence, the lower half of Wylan’s arm numb from the overstuffed plastic bags hanging from it. Kaz wastes no time passing the jug of bleach to Wylan and pointing to a narrow door sandwiched between a bookcase and a fogged window.. “Nina should be in the bathroom. Help her out.” Still not fully recovered from the cane-smacking incident at the pharmacy, Wylan shakes out his hands and hefts the jug into his arms, heading for the bathroom.

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices Kaz pouring portions of Gatorade, Pedialyte, and ginger ale into a water bottle as some sort of nasty cocktail.

Nina doesn’t seem to notice him as he enters the bathroom, despite the way the door creaked on its hinge. She kneels on the floor in front of a filled bathtub, a bucket beside her.

“I’ve got bleach for you,” Wylan says, and then flushes, because when she turns around he realizes that she’s wearing a red tank and what look to be baggy, heart-printed boxer shorts. 

“Thanks!” she says, and then laughs. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed. I’m not in my underwear. I mean, I guess I am, but I stole these from my boyfriend a long time ago. They make super comfy shorts.”

For whatever reason, all that Wylan says is, “Your boyfriend?”

Nina takes the bleach from him and starts dumping it into the bathtub, stirring with what looks like a broken broom handle. “Yeah, Matthias. You’ve probably heard him get mentioned before?” Wylan nods, thinking back to the rapidfire conversations yesterday. He definitely heard the name. 

As the acrid smell starts to fill the room, Nina pauses her stirring. Seeming satisfied, she pours the contents of the bucket into the tub - a ragged blanket, a set of clothes that are far too small for her, and Wylan just barely catches the glint of the knife she’d used the day before. “It’s funny, I’m not even sure if we’re still technically together. I haven’t seen him in -” she looks down, counting something on her fingers - “In about four months? Everything’s been so crazy lately, I don’t even know  _ what  _ we are anymore.”

It takes Wylan a moment or so to realize that her arms are exposed today, unlike in the bathrobe she’d worn yesterday. Her arm is out of its sling, but there’s still gauze wrapped tightly around her upper left arm, tinted slightly brown with dried blood. The second thing he notices is the scarring down her arms and on her thighs. The scars look almost like pinpricks - just a little indents here and there, with the occasional thin, short line scattered within.

“They aren’t track marks, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Nina says. He hadn’t realized that she’d turned away from the bathtub and was looking straight at him, and he flushes again. Wylan starts to stammer an apology when she says, “It’s okay. I know there’s a lot. Most of these are from training - they make sure you really know how to control yourself, and you know your limits.” She gestures to a particularly nasty-looking colony on her thigh. “The rest are mostly from when the other idiots got themselves in trouble. You don’t even want to know how many times I’ve had to heal Matthias. That boy just doesn’t seem to want to stay alive.”

“You’re a healer?” It shouldn’t be a surprise, really; he’d watched her heal her own bullet wound. Still, it wasn’t an aspect of blood magic that was discussed often. He’s heard about the strict regulations and intense training that’s required to become a registered blood magician, but no one ever seems to discuss what they actually  _ can  _ do. The focus instead is always the danger of untamed blood magic, which he supposes makes for a much catchier headline.

“Among other things,” Nina says, wringing her hands on her top before scooping her hair into a bun. “Blood magic is just a tool. We all know the harm that it can do, but it all depends on what the user wants to do with it.” She winks. “That’s your word of wisdom for the day.” 

It only takes a few minutes for the scent of the bleach to trigger the tell-tale flashing lights and dull pain of an oncoming migraine. He mentions this to Nina and exits the bathroom with every intention to return to his apartment and take a nap; however, he’s greeted by a strange, woody scent and Kaz, sitting at the kitchen table and sipping the cocktail he’d mixed earlier.

“Jesper’s in the room over there. Go make sure he doesn’t burn the place down,” Kaz says through a grimace after a long sip. Wylan almost shoots back with  _ this is your apartment, you do it, _ but for whatever reason decides it’s not worth the confrontation. 

* * *

For a second, he thinks that Kaz lied and sent him to an empty room, because the lights are turned off and he’s not sure in the middle of the room. After a second, though, he can make out some kind of movement as if the room lacks windows or if they’re well covered. The only source of light is a small candle. As he watches, something is held over the candle and for a moment it’s just bright enough that he can see a scrap of paper ignite.

“You can turn the light on,” Jesper says, and Wylan jumps half out of his skin. “I’m just about done here, and I’m losing my candle anyway.”

The lights flicker for a second before turning on. Jesper sits cross-legged in the middle of the room with his back to Wylan, with tiny sheets of paper laid out in front of him and two pots of burning incense on either side of him. With slow, steady movements, he sees Jesper lift a sheet of paper, close his hand around it once, and then hold it to the flame until it catches fire. “Come have a seat,” Jesper says. 

Wylan obeys, settling across from him. At this angle, he can see that each scrap has a different symbol etched in charcoal. “Are those sigils?”

Jesper looks at him and laughs, the sound strange compared to the room’s apparent stillness just a moment ago. “Yeah, but these are real ones, not the fake shit you used to draw. No offense.”

They’re strangely beautiful, drawn with an elegant hand, and all of the lines and curves overlap somehow in a way that Wylan had never been able to master. He can make out letters, sort of, but they curve and bend in ways that are unexpected. His sigils had always been straightforward, letters stacked on letters, but never flowing together the way that Jesper’s do. “They look beautiful. Why are you burning them?”

As he asks, Jesper holds another one over the flame. “I’m releasing them. Sigils only work if you send them out into the world. As long as these are in front of me, they’re just drawings.” 

Wylan watches as the corners catch fire and start to curl towards the center. In seconds, the only trace of the sigil is the faint scent of smoke. It still seems like a shame to burn something so beautiful, but he supposes that’s how magic works. He’d never really understood. Magic, they said, was something alive and flowing, and anyone had the ability to draw on it and channel it. It was only the lucky few who were able to direct magic, to overcome its own will and use it for whatever they intended. 

Anyone, that is, except him, who has never felt even the slightest connection even though the only active ley line ebbs through the ground beneath him.

“Why did you come visit me?” he says, not fully aware of his voice until it leaves him. “All of those times, for my fake sigils and faulty magic. Why did you come?”

The flame reflects in Jesper’s eyes as he rubs the final sigil between his hands, reluctant to let it go. “I had to protect you,” he says, but his voice catches. “You saw it. The blankets, everything. Kaz and I made them here, but it was the only way to stay close enough that I could actually put them to use.”

Wylan feels a pang in his chest, almost disappointment. He doesn’t know why. “But why  _ me _ ?” he asks, and even though Jesper starts to open his mouth, he continues, “I know, I know, you can’t tell me, it’s not safe. I just wish I knew  _ something _ .”

Jesper hesitates, releases a soft breath, and finally holds the final sigil over the flame. It’s started to extinguish so it catches the parchment lazily. After several failed attempts, it joins the rest of its batch as ashes. “I know. There has to be a way to get around all of those curses, but you saw them. Whoever worked on you obviously didn’t want you to know who you are, and I’m sure they put measures in place to prevent you from discovering. The last thing I want is to accidentally hurt you.”

“I know that. I just wish I knew.”

He feels Jesper shift and rise to his feet beside him. He hears him stumble, knock into something, and then finally spread the curtains so light starts to trickle into the room again. “Believe me, I’m working on it,” Jesper says, heading for the next window. Before he reaches it, however, he stops and faces Wylan again. “But what, exactly, do you remember?”

_ Not much _ , he wants to say,  _ nothing important _ , but instead he takes a breath and starts, “My name is Wylan Hendriks. It wasn’t always.” He doesn’t think about what he’s saying. The words just flow. “The only place I can remember living is the apartment across the hall, but I know there must have been somewhere else. I work as a fortune teller at The Sixth Crow, but I don’t remember being hired there. And until you asked me yesterday, I never thought anything of this.

“Sometimes, I think I’m spacing out but it turns out that hours have passed and it feels like seconds. I have recurring dreams where a woman is speaking to me, but I never remember what she says. When I think too hard about either of these things, my head hurts and I lose more time. And…” 

And just as quickly as started, the flow ceases and he’s left speechless with a dull pounding in his head. “And that’s all I know.”

Jesper doesn’t speak at first. The air suddenly feels heavy and soupy, the tang of the incense blended with smoke still lingering after the flame has been snuffed. He crosses the room in a few short strides, and up close Wylan can see that his hands are smudged gray with charcoal. He raises them anyway and rests one on his shoulder, the other on his neck, thumb just barely grazing his cheek. 

“Hey, that was pretty good,” he says, and for whatever reason the beginnings of Wylan’s headache dissipate without much alarm. “It’ll be slow work, but we’ll get there. I think I have an idea to jog your memory, but it’ll be a bit of a field trip. Safer than the last one.”

Wylan opens his mouth to speak, but the sound of a pronounced  _ thump  _ outside startles him enough to shoo whatever he was going to say. Jesper jumps too, hands falling down to his sides. “Did you hear that too?”

Jesper shifts. “It was probably nothing. Nina or Kaz probably tripped, happens all the time.” But as soon as he finishes speaking, there’s another sound, and he promptly rolls his eyes and heads for the door.

Wylan follows him, a step back, and he isn’t sure what he was expecting, but a tiny girl in an oversized nightshirt who looks simultaneously like she’s out for blood and about to topple over certainly isn’t it. She looks so different that it takes him a moment to recognize it’s her, the half-dead girl from yesterday that he’d pulled out of  _ somewhere _ .

Nina emerges behind her, reaching for her arm. The girl wrenches herself away, eyes fixated on Jesper. “What did you  _ do _ ?” she shouts, taking up an impressive amount of space despite her small size and lack of clothing. “Why would you -?” Her gaze shifts to Wylan, and she falls silent for a moment before turning back to Jesper. 

He stutters, and then chokes out, “I was taking the kid over there on a field trip, and apparently I’m a bad chaperone.”

“You didn’t think that was a bad idea?”

Nina lurches forward again, wrapping an arm around the girl’s shoulder, but Inej shakes her off, throwing her arms down. “Hey, Inej, maybe you should lay down, you know, recover -” 

But Inej, with great effort, pushes her back. “I’m fine, and we don’t have time to recover. There was an IMP agent in the ley line with me, and I think you just set her free.” There’s a moment where no one reacts, and then Jesper and Kaz are moving towards her. “Jesper, you have to warn Matthias.” Jesper opens his mouth, but she just shakes her head. “No, there’s no time. I’ll do it.” 

Wylan has seen Jesper come and go enough that the sudden disappearance isn’t quite as shocking. He’s ready for it to happen, the second of stillness and then just air where a body used to be, but Inej doesn’t go anywhere. She stands there, stock still, and then her eyes widen and she crumples to the floor. Nina is on her in an instant, squatting in front of her and squeezing her forearms. “Hey, it’s okay, let me check your wounds -”

The shock stops Inej from reacting immediately. She looks up at Jesper again, and with the ferocity gone from her face Wylan is struck by how  _ young  _ she looks. He knows, logically, that the others can’t be much older than him, if at all, but they’re always so on alert and knowledgeable that they feel years older. 

“What did you do?” Inej asks again, and this time Jesper answers for real.

“Wylan pulled you out. He… passed right through the ley line and grabbed you.” He glances over at Wylan and adds, “For your reference, we can’t do that. Inej and I can pass through Nowhere like it’s nothing, but we can’t touch the ley line.”

Wylan shifts his weight between his feet. “I’m sorry,” he says, not meeting her eyes at first. “I didn’t know.”

Inej closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. She rises to her feet, straightens her nightgown, and pulls her hair out of the loose bun it was tucked into. “You didn’t know. I can’t blame you for that, but we do have to deal with this mess now.”

“I’ll warn Matthias,” Jesper says, seconds before vanishing.

The four of them that are left don’t move at first. After a moment, Nina also stands, wrapping an arm almost protectively around Inej. 

Kaz, who had been silent the entire time, takes a single step forward. “I’m glad you’re back, Inej,” he says, and it may be a trick of the light, but Wylan almost thinks he might be smiling the slightest bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's... literally no excuse for why this took so long lmao. we'll see if updates get any better, but thank you for your patience!!! i love and appreciate it!!
> 
> also, yes, the gatorade/pedialyte/ginger ale cocktail is brought to you from personal experience. yes, it is disgusting. yes, it tastes like the saltiest and sweetest thing you will ever drink. but sometimes life is just like that yknow ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	5. interlude, ii: nina

Nina wakes up in the middle of the night to the sensation of someone curled up next to her, like a housecat. 

She’s upright with the bedside lamp on before she can think about it, her sleepiness shed as her training instincts kick in. However, she sees the shiny plait and deep, dark eyes of her bedmate, and she sinks back down. “ _Saints_ , Inej, you nearly killed me. How are you feeling?”

She doesn’t respond and instead cuddles up closer to her. Inej, as a rule, is not cuddly; she’s usually more interested in being close sentimentally but not physically. On occasion, though, the mood strikes her, and Nina is always a fan of snuggles.

Besides, Kaz is about as cuddly as a box of nails.

“Like I got sliced open,” Inej murmurs into NIna’s side. “But thank you.”

It’s not surprising. Bloodletting is hardly pleasant. Even with Nina carefully controlling the amount of blood that Inej lost, it’s still a lot. Not to mention the lingering toxicity that inevitably was left in her blood, but in small enough amounts it won’t kill her.

During training, they’d been forced to poison each other, and then drain it back out. Her partner - a cruel, braggart of a boy named Tomek - had made the ritual cuts with a chillingly gleeful smile, and then waited until she was on the verge of unconsciousness before slowing her heart rate and increasing her blood production. She was weak and lightheaded the next week as a result.

Sure, they’d all practiced magic on each other. But until that point, it had been relatively safe - tailoring appearances, increasing and decreasing heart rate, healing. One time, they controlled each other’s motions. That was the first time she’d had to slice into a person and then sit there with their life in her hands.

She’d passed with flying colors. 

Tomek had failed and was never seen again.

Her shoulder throbs as Inej falls back to sleep, breathing deep and even against Nina’s chest. It wasn’t the worst wound she’d ever healed before, but bullet wounds were always tricky; there was too many layers disturbed, too many complications to worry about. Still, her wound is nothing to complain about. Sure, it’ll leave a nasty scar - she never did master invisible healing - but considering the damage she could have done in her state that night…

She was lucky they’d only given her small dose of blood. There’s always been urban legends, of course. Magic users - especially blood magicians - disappearing, only to reappear drugged out of their minds on the blood of a ley line. Of course, as the natural ley lines have shrunken, the legends have become especially improbable; after all, anyone with their hands on something so precious would be careless to waste it on causing mayhem. And to make it worse, in all of the stories, the unspoken origin of the drugged magicians was always the angels. 

Of course, she’d known that their ley line had once been in angel captivity. He’d escaped once, somehow IMP had found out, and eventually down a long chain of dominoes Kaz had been informed. But still, the blood is a physical reminder of what had happened to him.

The thought sends a chill down her spine. She knows their cruelty first hand, both from the short time she’d spent in captivity, and then from changing Matthias’s bandages for weeks after he’d defected. 

He had only allowed her to see the wounds where his wings had been once. She’d begged him to let her at least help with his healing, but every time he insisted on replacing the gauze himself and only allowing her to wrap the bandages on top. The only time he’d allowed her was when the wounds had gotten infected despite careful packing and constant cleaning. He hadn’t needed bloodletting, thank goodness, but she’ll never forget the deep, ugly gouges on his back.

But what had scared her the most was that she’d immediately thought of the saying she’d heard countless times growing up. _If you see an angel, you run. If you see an angel without wings, you stay there and make your peace because they have nothing to lose._

She’d wanted to run. She still wants to run, to escape reality and pretend that nothing’s wrong with the world, that she and her kind and the people she loves are safe. She wants to run away with the girl in her bed to a place where no one will ever hurt her again.

But she’s not a child anymore, and there’s work to be done, so she gently lifts herself out of bed, tucks her blankets around Inej, and gets to work cleaning up the blood from the previous night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may ask: is this fic kanej? is it ninej? is it helnik? the answer is yes.

**Author's Note:**

> hey friends! thanks for sticking through this strange, strange fic. 
> 
> what is this, you may ask? a collection of worldbuilding and character elements i cultivated for years but due to being unable to finish any sort of long narrative, i instead have adapted into a six of crows fanfic, of all things. the basic idea is a ragtag group of various magic-associated folk + one Perfectly Average Human team up to kill a goddess and Things Get Weird. the storyline is very near and dear to my heart, so i'm really excited to share this adaptation of it!
> 
> also, to the fbi agent inside my computer: no, i definitely did not research how to hotwire a car. absolutely not. no way.


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